On a whim, my husband decided to apply for a job…2400 miles from our current home. For some reason, he was shocked when the company contacted him for an interview. Suddenly, the whim went from “oh well that would be interesting” to “oh crap how are we going to move with 22 chickens, three pregnant […]

Do your chickens have names? The first of my chickens that I ever named were the original six Cornish cross meat birds we raised. As a farm kid, I’ve always known where food comes from and it didn’t bother me that we would eventually eat these chickens. So we named them Marsala, Extra Crispy, Pot […]

Laws tend to be about following rules, something that many homesteaders aren’t necessarily keen on embracing. Matt Wilkinson shares his take on existing small-scale poultry keeping and chicken processing laws and how you can make them work for you. Skeptic and Solution Finder I’ve never enjoyed being told what to do, especially if I could […]

Joel Salatin (aka Chicken Man), Author of Pastured Poultry Profits, writes about the pros and cons of U.S. government poultry processing regulations. Legislation Protecting Small-Scale Poultry Producers One of the early poultry processing laws in the U.S. was passed by Congress in 1957. The Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA) requires that any poultry intended to […]

Tricks and tips for hatching chicks with incubators and moving them to brooders. You can read about incubators at Taking the Guesswork Out of Incubators -Advertisement- – Hatching Begins in the Egg The hatching process is one of the niftiest little miracles in the animal world. During the last days of incubation, the chick grows […]

Summer was warm, the days were long, and you got used to having lots of eggs. Then your hens stopped laying. Michele Cook looks at the many different reasons your hens may (temporarily) have stopped laying eggs. Why have my chickens stopped laying eggs? Ugh! This is a common complaint from chicken keepers all over […]

Traci DeLore helps you navigate selective breeding in your urban flocks. With a little effort, you can breed preferred traits into your flock. If you’ve kept a number of chickens for any time, you’re bound to have said, “I wish that chicken had a smaller comb” or “I wish I had more chickens that laid blue […]

Do’s and Don’t for buying chicks from feed stores, from blogger Kaylee Vaughn. Check out Part 1 Buying from Local Breeders and Part 2 Buying from Professional Hatcheries as well.    You’ve decided to purchase your first chicks! Or, maybe, you are adding some new chicks to your existing flock! Either way, it’s an exciting […]

Do’s and Don’t for buying chicks from professional hatcheries from blogger Kaylee Vaughn. Check out Part 1 Buying from Local Breeders and Part 3 Buying from Feed Stores as well.    You’ve decided to purchase your first chicks! Or, maybe, you are adding some new chicks to your existing flock! Either way, it’s an exciting […]

Part of our Breed Profiles series, Sussex chickens are dual purposes birds with several distinctive plumage patterns. History Possible, like the Dorking, originally introduced to the British Isles by the Romans Contemporary  breed Originated in south east  England area of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.  Probably most popular table bird in 19th c and through mid-20thc. […]